Snowden’s Chinese Fans

While the U.S. government readies its response to Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor hiding in Hong Kong with U.S. intelligence documents, he is embarking on his own diplomacy. Snowden is greeting his new hosts, appealing to Hong Kong to treat him fairly, and offering a sample of his knowledge of U.S. hacking against Chinese targets. Whatever one thinks of Snowden’s decision to leak and run (my colleagues have reviewed the arguments for and against), Snowden’s decision to speak directly to China’s interests is brash—though, I suspect, unlikely to win the support of the Chinese government.

In an interview with the South China Morning Post, Snowden told the paper: “I have had many opportunities to flee HK, but I would rather stay and fight the United States government in the courts, because I have faith in Hong Kong’s rule of law.” He said that the U.S. has conducted sixty-one thousand hacking operations worldwide, including “hundreds” on universities, businesses, and public officials in Hong Kong and mainland China. “We hack network backbones—like huge Internet routers, basically—that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one,” he told the paper.

Offering details about America’s cyber strategy on China may not help him much in American public opinion, but it already has in China. After initially attracting muted attention during a Chinese holiday earlier this week, by Thursday, his case was major news, and Snowden was a popular man here. Mo Shucao flagged me to an online survey that found that seventy-eight per cent of respondents regarded Snowden as a freedom fighter who protects civil liberties. As for how the Chinese government should handle the case, eighty-one per cent supported giving Snowden asylum either to protect him or extract more of the intelligence he is able to leak. Only three per cent supported surrendering him to the United States.

For Chinese officials who have tried, largely in vain, to make the world think that they are being hacked as much as they are hacking, this was a very good day. Snowden said he revealed the details in hopes of exposing “the hypocrisy of the U.S. government when it claims that it does not target civilian infrastructure, unlike its adversaries.” In China, the nationalist end of the press corps signaled its support for using Snowden’s status as a chip in negotiations. “America Owes Global Web Users an Explanation,” was the headline on an editorial in the Global Times, which said, “We have the right to ask the U.S. government whether its surveillance programs have been used during Sino-U.S. governmental or business negotiations. If the question of extraditing Snowden becomes an issue, we can decide, based on various circumstances, whether to provide vigorous cooperation.”

A popular Chinese comment making the rounds on Thursday said, “If Edward Snowden was Chinese and worked for the Chinese National Security Agency, Obama probably would already have had him to dinner at the White House and nominated him for the next Nobel Peace Prize.” A contingent of Chinese Internet users was arguing for the need, as one put it, to “extract information from the ‘hero’ Snowden before sending him off to Russia” or to “grant political asylum to Snowden” as a “demonstration of state power.”

I find those scenarios highly unlikely. Beijing has far more to be gained diplomatically from avoiding any public meddling in Snowden’s case than it does from embracing him and alienating Washington. He may have information that Chinese officials would love to see, but acquiring it in spectacular fashion would be provocative and costly. That being said, at the risk of descending into a le Carré plot, one has to wonder if Snowden has protected himself against an unwanted attempt to duplicate his documents and digital files. If a newspaper was able to track him down without much trouble, we can assume that Chinese intelligence was already aware of his whereabouts.

The image of Snowden and Chinese intelligence as a congenial match is hard to picture. He has talked about the “consent of the governed.” He has said, “I believe in freedom of expression,” and, “It is only right that the public form its own opinion.” These statements are not going to endear him to Chinese authorities. (As Hannah Beech at Time points out, Beijing authorities are also tied up this week detaining or sentencing at least two people in connection with free expression.)

Instead of going to Beijing any time soon, Snowden is more likely to remain in Hong Kong, using the courts and the local media to try to stall the eventual efforts to bring him back to the United States. He may have company. His cause is attracting supporters in his new home. A rally, with legislators and human-rights activists, is scheduled for Saturday in Hong Kong.